It makes sense to give first impressions of this unit against the Pioneer DJ CDJ-2000NXS, which is the player the Denon DJ SC5000 is gunning for, and which is a comparison that will most clearly demonstrate how Denon DJ has gone about its attempt to usurp the sitting giant in the pro DJ booth.
So, we placed the Denon DJ SC5000 Prime alongside the latest Pioneer DJ media player (the CDJ-2000NXS2). Before even plugging it in, the most striking thing initially is the similarity, not the difference, between the units. Frankly, barring the brand name, the non-DJ would be hard pushed to spot anything.
They both have a big, raised platter. They both have a decent-sized screen, raised at the back (the Denon DJ’s screen is slightly bigger). They’re both black. They’re almost exactly the same size (the Denon unit appears wider, but it’s only because the raised section at the back is full-width, whereas the NXS2’s raised section is narrower; the Denon unit is also slightly higher at the back). And they both have those slightly kitsch, oversized silver feet, that in modern media players don’t actually do an awful lot apart from – presumably – nod to a continuity of function between digital players and record decks.
Side by side, they’re actually more or less exactly the same size, but the SC5000 appears slightly bigger.Heck, when Denon DJ first gave me a hands on with these units back in December 2016, it took me till the end of the (admittedly bleary eyed, early morning) session to realise that the SC5000 Prime has no CD slot! These are purely digital players, designed to work with computers, software and portable media storage such as USBs and SD cards.
The big differences
Look a little more, and apart from the styling differences (Denon DJ has gone for square cue and play/pause buttons, not round; the “grips” on the sides of the jogwheels are different), there are only three big notable breaks in layout from pro media player convention:
The Denon DJ player has its USB and SD card slots at the front of the unit, tucked in where the CD slots are on Pioneer CDJs, and set back to keep USBs and SDs out of harm’s way
The SC5000 Prime has performance pads situated under its platter, positioned where any controller DJs would expect to find them, albeit in a single row of eight (plus associated control/function keys in a smaller row above), as opposed to two rows of four, which is of course the “controller” paradigm (these replace the less user-friendly hot cue buttons, laid out top left and vertically on the Pioneer player)
The SC5000 Prime has two sets of analogue/digital audio outputs at the back, not one; these (and the inconspicuous “layer” button to the left of the screen) being the only clues to the fact that it is capable of simultaneously playing two tracks through two channels of a mixer, meaning a pair of these give you full four-deck playback – something, of course, enjoyed by controller/software DJs for many years
If anything, the Denon player appears overall simpler and “cleaner” than the Pioneer; the removal of Pioneer DJ’s all of a sudden convoluted-feeling looping and legacy cue/loop memory sections in favour of simpler controller-type loop functions, plus a cleaner area around the screen (the Denon DJ unit has half the buttons of the CDJ-2000NXS in this area), in conjunction with the moving of the media slots out of sight, mean that even with the new performance buttons, the Denon DJ unit somehow appears a little less intimidating.
More on this later – but as you’re going to see, actually the biggest innovations are associated with workflow and usability, not the somewhat cunningly similar layout.
